


who bleeds what she cries

by kousanoes



Series: who bleeds what she cries [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Post-Canon, Prison, she is FOURTEEN yall, uhh mental breakdowns i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22468120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kousanoes/pseuds/kousanoes
Summary: Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream. Scream.Writhe. Thrash. Break.Don’t let him get close. Don’t lose your bending. Without it, you would be worse off than not existing at all. Your unbridled skill, your talent, your power, your prestige, your love—it would all be gone, in the hands of the world’s protector. How can he stand it? How can he live like this?Laugh, Azula, laugh: all you have left is unrelenting anger and your father in the cell next to you.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar), Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: who bleeds what she cries [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616512
Comments: 2
Kudos: 120





	who bleeds what she cries

**Author's Note:**

> call me _Mazu_ / call me _Sedna_ / whisper _Keto_ when i’m mad ; insp. from [modern goddess, cd](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/566060/modern-goddess/).

Dear eldest brother taunts her with a wicked smile on his face. Lightning sparks at her fingers, in sync with the breath thumping in her ears. Her blood is alight. It reflects in her vision; the fires in the courtyard make him glow alive, embers flickering at his back. He looks spirit-chosen, if nothing else. 

Maybe she’s hallucinating. Maybe not. Sozin’s Comet passes by—just for a second—and her brother’s head eclipses its radiance. 

It is as if her gods are mocking her. _Here_ , they chant, _is the true leader_. 

Once-hunted, once-killed dragons snake along his shoulders and chest, overtop his robes, around his eye. Stenciled, they are the colours of the rainbow, a red-orange-yellow-green-purple. There is a distinct lack of blue, she concedes with a thrust of her fist. 

The ritual drums begin to sound. It is custom that this song be performed during an Agni Kai of political weight, but her father has since banished the regular performers. The Fire Sages must be playing it now, then. 

She doesn’t need spirits to tell her that this Agni Kai is special. It has been ages since one had any real weight to it. 

This, she knows, symbolizes a new beginning. The future of her nation rests on these next five minutes. 

She clenches her fist. She has no reason to be afraid. She mastered every single firebending kata years before her brother even attempted them. She knows her combative martial arts better than the back of her hand; she may not be a Ty Lee or Mai, but she could perform them in her sleep. She has. 

She is prodigious. It is in her blood. It is in her name. 

Her dear eldest brother’s voice cracks, symbolic of his youth. The Water Tribe girl clutches her hands to her chest, eyes wide and worried. Something slimy crawls down her gut, and Azula sneers. 

She does not belong here. How dare she tarnish the palace grounds? If nothing else, it shows that he knows nothing about sacrality by bringing her here. 

Snarl. Crooked, wicked, and illicit, fire runs through her veins and demands obedience. The sun on her back calls out to her, begging, pleading. 

_Shut up_ , she tells it. Her father always told her to take control of the element.

Fire sears at her palms. The smell of raw flesh fills the air. Her brother clearly smells it, too. 

Push past it. Don’t let it become a weakness. She is the only one left, and she must hold on to her heritage. It is all her father has given her. 

Zuko throws his hands out, and she sees nothing but a clash of red and blue. Her soul is spread bare, open to the air.

His anger—rather, his determination—collides with hers. She feels his sanctity, and it burns. He is a rich red-orange-yellow, a pure colour reminiscent of her high-strung uncle. Figures; all that time together must’ve rubbed off on him. 

He shouts vocal defiance. He is her elder brother; this, at least, proves it. It doesn’t matter, though. She will win. She has to. 

Every word he speaks sounds like a maggot slinking its way out his mouth, across the courtyard, into her open pores. They find her soft spots and dig deep. He knows her inside and out, even if he is nothing but a liar. A liar and a traitor. He knows to hit where it hurts. 

He is not spirit-forsaken nor fated-to-lose. He shares her heritage. How could she have forgotten? 

She has no time to think, to plan, to prepare; how far has he come to push her up against the edge like this? She remembers fighting him on the battleship, surrounded by his lackeys, like it was yesterday. Rage fights its way back inside, and a laugh forces its way out her throat. 

He left her. 

He left her! 

She knows the truth: the moment the Avatar defeats her father, it is game over. The moment her father wins, the title of Fire Lord is no longer a spirit’s gift. It is a lose-lose situation, let’s be honest. 

She will stay his second-hand man for as long as he lives.

She can still hear his words echoing in her hears: _Azula_ , he says, _my dearest daughter, you will be the Fire Lord, the first of her kind. You will be reborn as a true dragon_. 

In a fit of irony, he claims the next made-up title— _A concept you can’t begin to understand_ , he sneers, which makes him sound like her mother; he’d look like her too if he were to face her for once in his life—and bestows her the meaningless one. 

Anger dies at the back of her throat. She can no longer afford to lose focus. Dear eldest brother is coming at her in full-force, ready to punt her into the ground and leave her there. 

Almost, just almost, he succeeds. Fire lashes at her ankles. She tumbles and falls, skids hard against the ground, throws her shoulder out of junction. 

She can’t feel anything but cold, inner fire broken to pieces. It’s shattered the way she left her mirror this morning. There is nothing left in her to care. 

Her breath, carefully conditioned, is scattered across the hard ground floor. Scramble to pick it up, grab the biggest pieces. She summons what is left of her energy, her faith, her knowledge to seek fate. 

Maybe her mother was right—except that would mean her father was wrong, and that is impossible. 

Almost, just almost, she lets him win for the first time in his life. Almost, just almost, she lets him kill her. Nothing could hurt more than it already does, right? Between her father’s betrayal, her mother’s scorn, and her brother’s con, what meaning does the future hold for her? 

Her luck and hard work has ran out, her talent bled dry. 

_Where’s your lightning_ , her brother taunts. _Afraid I’ll redirect it?_

Laugh, Azula, laugh: leave no room for words. He asks for death, and she shall grant it to him. Her hands follow the simple, ritualistic motions she has been practicing since birth. She can barely hear the snap-crackle-pop of the heat she once found solace in. 

It is time to return the torch. He is the challenger, and soon, if she doesn’t make a move, he will be the victor. 

The traitor! He left her bare before the dragon-phoenix. Her arms itch with perfidy. 

If there is one reason for her existence, it must be this moment: prove the worth of her father’s investment by stopping the revolution in its tracks. 

Aim, point, Azula. He knows how to redirect anger and inner turmoil. She can’t let him know. 

Katara doesn’t. 

She can win, this way. She can prove herself to her people, this way. 

Aim, point, Azula. Time is ticking; lightning is volatile, precarious. It doesn’t take kindly to instructions.

It’s the thrill of the chase. Adrenaline in her arteries and vulnerability in her veins, Azula chases her across the rooftops and the fountains. 

She must ignore her brother lying on the ground. He would do the same if it were her, she knows. It is why he came. 

The Fire Sages don’t intervene. They wouldn’t dare, not when they know their place. If there is retribution, it will come from the spirits. There won’t be, though. Their duty is to defend balance, but they haven’t been, not in a hundred years. Why now?

Azula chases her, wild and free. Katara runs. With one hand on the rounded beam, Azula propels herself around a tight corner. 

And then she breathes. 

And then she is frozen. 

And then she breathes, and then Azula’s hands are shackled behind her back, and she is drowning in fire, she cannot breathe, she cannot think— 

And then the sun sets, and she has failed the one task she was put on this earth to do. 

* * *

The servants gossip about their new Fire Lord and their newfound freedom. 

Laugh, Azula, laugh. She is on the floor, in chains, spitting fire. She can hear the festivities far away; the telltale crack of fireworks and oppressed cheer. The truth settles on her shoulders, whispering into her ears how she is _alone_ and _unloved_. 

This is her retribution, she thinks. She was wrong. 

That’s OK—she has been wrong before. What’s more world-shattering, what makes this a dream, is that her father was wrong. He cannot be wrong. He— 

Her stomach burns with churning lightning, but she keeps her mouth clamped shut. Should she be any less dignified—poised, controlled, and disciplined—it might burst out her mouth, singeing her tongue. It’d make her a human dragon. 

* * *

They feed her the same grub they serve Mai and Ty Lee, if they are still in prison and her dear eldest brother hasn’t released them already. It tastes marginally worse than when she cooked for herself—a day ago? two?—before her coronation. 

Her failed coronation.

A little bit falls off her spoon and splats on the ground. She glares at it. Mai and Ty Lee should be free by now. Zuko’s loyalty was never to her, nor to their father, nor their nation, but rather to his so-called honour, world peace, and merry gang of followers. 

Her merry gang of followers betrayed her and left her to die, didn't they? Pleasant thoughts. 

Laugh, Azula, laugh, and freeze when the man in the neighbouring cell speaks. She can’t see his gaunt, sunken-in face, not when it’s blocked by concrete walls and steel bars, but she’d recognize that voice anywhere. It’s one of two, three, six voices that haunts her in her sleep. Never let it be said that she isn’t filial, that she isn’t loyal to her people. 

“Is that you, Azula?” 

She can hear the sneer in his voice, his yearn for glory. His distaste for everything lesser. How he has fallen; he is no longer an emperor but a despicable man in a despicable cell. 

And yet, he is still loved. What about her? 

She stops laughing. 

“My Lord,” she says, purposely callous. Cold. Inject a little more haughty, a little more bitch. A little less feeling. More royalty. It’s what he would want, and she wants him to be proud of her. 

A beat passes, and she instinctively curses herself. He is no longer a lord—what a stupid blunder. How she has fallen. 

“Shut up,” he snaps. 

“I wasn’t speaking,” she says, off-kilter. 

It’s OK to speak back now, she thinks. He is just as disgraced as she is, so he can’t hurt her. And even if he did—even if he tried to punish her like he did her dear eldest brother—she’s hit rock-bottom anyway. 

“You were laughing,” he says, scorn in his voice. 

She shrugs. “You should try it sometime. Keeps the critters away.” 

His silence stretches for too long; she only hears his heavy breathing. It’s not unlike when he was controlling the throne flames—deep in, slow out. The fires would rise and fall with each breath. 

He asks, “What happened?” 

Well, she thinks it is a question; it comes out more like a demand. 

“So demanding,” she sighs. Is she supposed to obey him despite their supposed new equality, in this rotting cell? She can’t even see the sun from here! No wonder they were empty all these years. Fire Nation royalty should have more dignity than this. 

Regardless, she answers his question, albeit in the most roundabout way possible. 

“Mother came by to say ‘hi’, but she ended up breaking my mirror,” she sing-songs, spinning a finger in the air. The urge to light a flame is ever-present, and thinking of her mother does not help one bit. “Then Zuko showed up and challenged me for your relegated lordship.” 

No matter how she phrases it, it sounds like she lost, even though she didn't. 

The silence that ensues is ridden with disappointment. She is disappointed in herself for expecting more than disappointment from him. 

Finally, she gathers the courage to ask, “And you? What happened?” 

He says nothing for so long she almost forgets the question. Until, finally, he says, “I lost my bending.” 

* * *

When the time comes, they take him away. She watches as they shackle him up, bind his hands together. He leaves a long shadow on the floor, reflected by the light held in the palm of the guards' hands.

Something akin to guilt settles in the pit of her stomach. The guards are taunting him with their bending. It has not been long since the war was over—at least, not by her count—so he still stands tall. He was built for power, it’s clear. Useless power, nonetheless. 

As they take him away, he does not spare a glance to Azula’s cell. Even though he could—even though he should, because what happened to being a father? she must not be daughter enough—he does not. 

Spirits, he lost. He has no more dignity to keep, he would lose nothing by pretending to care. At least, that way, he might still keep her loyalty. 

Fine, then. It’s just her in the corner of her cell, just like it’s always been. He can watch from his perch in her imagination, like the rest of her family, and watch her succeed. She will succeed. 

Laugh, Azula, laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> in the second (unfinished) draft i have >8k words, which i cut out most of to make this third version. it went on a more... healing route, i guess, so the tone felt disconnected from the first scene here. i was actually considering posting that one scene by itself, but obviously that didn't happen. the series is there in case i do have something else to post ;)
> 
> comments make a writer's day, and if you have the energy/time, please consider letting me know your opinion on how i handled aspects like pacing, description, consistency, etc.! if not, that's ok; thank you for making it this far <3
> 
> [tumblr](kousanoes.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] who bleeds what she cries](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478549) by [Oceantail Podfics (Oceantail)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceantail/pseuds/Oceantail%20Podfics)




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